Thursday, 15 May 2014

Product Review: Vtech Baby's 1st Smartphone: Did it save my iPhone?

In this techological age of smartphones, laptops and tablets, babies and toddlers are looking at them and no doubt wondering what these fascinating objects are. Over the past few months, Little One has started to take a little too much interest in my iPhone and makes a mad dash for it whenever he sees it. He's at that age where he learns by putting everything in his mouth, and recently he's been really interested in trying to eat my iPhone (I'm sure many of you have had the same problem!). We stumbled upon the VTech Baby's First Smartphone in Mamas & Papas for £15 and thought we'd see if it would entertain him and distract him from wanting to play with mine!

The suggested age range for the VTech smartphone is 6-36 months. At nearly 10 months, Little One is definitely interested in the toy (when he's in the mood!) but too young still to appreciate or be able to play with the various functions. These include:

A touch screen. Little One scratches at the screen because it looks like the screen has buttons and he's a bit young yet to understand the concept of a touch screen. He enjoys looking at the flashing lights though.

The slider on the front allows baby to play with two different screen modes: The music screen (pictured below) which plays 10 short songs.

The home screen (below) has 12 'app' buttons.

The 'apps' include a pretend calendar, clock, and a weather function, all designed to help teach your baby or toddler about their day.

Each button has a little song which is meant to help develop baby's speech and language. These include numbers 1-9, names of basic shapes and ABC. Again, these are quite advanced skills for a baby to pick up, but by hearing them, it might encourage them to start copying the words

The home button is meant to allow parents to type in and save their home phone number so your baby or toddler can pretend to phone home. I haven't managed to key in the whole number successfully yet though!

Overall, the 'smartphone' has lots of things to keep a toddler engaged, but I think Little One is a bit young to understand how to use the phone properly yet. When he's a bit older, I think it will be great for helping him to learn a few words teaching him some songs. It's also nice that he can pretend to call animal friends which stimulates the imagination. If he's in the right mood, he will look at it and try and touch the flashing lights and wave it around in the air.

Does it keep him away from my phone? Well, although it is big and looks and feels nothing like my phone, it seems to have done the trick. I think he knows it's not my phone but it does keep him entertained for short bursts. I look forward to when he can enjoy using it even more when he's a bit older. At £15 I think it's quite pricey, but I'm hoping that it will be a great toy for car journeys and for taking on holiday as it's small, lightweight and multi-functional.